Being on a diet can be a very difficult thing, especially if you enjoy going out to eat at restaurants with your friends and family. Listed below are three easy tips that can help you continue to eat out while still keeping your diet on track.

Portion Control

One of the biggest reasons why it is so difficult to maintain a diet when eating out is because many restaurants will offer much larger portions sizes than you actually need. While this is great from a value standpoint, it can completely derail a diet if you do not find a way to limit your portion sizes.

An easy way to practice portion control is to consider ordering a single main course to share with someone else in your party. Another option is to simply ask your waiter or waitress to have your food divided in half with one portion being brought to the table and the other half placed into a to-go container.

Since the entire main dish will not be sitting in front of you it will be easier to resist the temptation to overeat. A nice bonus to this option is that you will have a nice meal to have at a later time. 

Salad

Another simple way to keep your diet on track while eating at a restaurant is to consider adding a salad to whatever main course that you order. Not only is the salad going to provide you with a healthy serving of vegetables, but it will also fill you up so that you are less likely to overindulge on dessert or your main course. If you want to make this option even better for your diet you can ask your waiter or waitress to place any dressing on the side of the salad so that you can control how much dressing is used.

Drinks

Finally, you can make eating out a lot healthier for you and your diet by being very careful about what you drink. When eating out it can be easy to overlook the sheer amount of empty calories and sugar that comes with having soft drinks or alcoholic beverages. Instead of those drinks, consider ordering some type of green tea or water.

Just because you are dieting does not mean that you have to stay home and avoid eating pizza with your friends and/or family. If you are careful about portion control and the drinks that you order you can easily eat out and still maintain your diet or healthy eating habits.